If you aren't sure where you stand on the issues, don't feel alone. The world
we live in becomes more complex every single day. Is the earth as fragile as
some would have us believe or has it endured because it's quite resilient? You
decide. These issues are not going away and will continue to plague us with
complex problems that will require us all to make hard decisions.

You will find plenty of food for thought and information to contemplate. Be
sure to check back often.

The rainy deluge that hit the Mother Lode this weekend dropped 3 to 8 inches of rain over a 72 hour period, and meteorologists at the National Weather Service say another storm is on its way.

The next storm is expected to drop 2.5 to 3 inches of rain on the Sonora area, which will be less because warm air has the capability to hold more moisture than cold air. Snow levels will continue to be high as elevation increases, with Twain Harte expected to get 3 to 4 inches of snow on Tuesday and Wednesday. It will not snow in Sonora, Del Valle said. The strongest winds will be confined to the valley, reaching 40 to 60 miles per hour, with wind speeds around 35 to 40 miles per hour in the Sonora area. Mountain ridge top gusts will reach 50 to 70 mph.

Northern California and the San Joaquin Valley are bracing for potential flooding this weekend, as a massive weather system known as an atmospheric river builds off the coast.

The National Weather Service issued a flood watch Thursday, stretching from Saturday afternoon through Monday, for 24 northern counties, including the six-county Sacramento region. Officials warned of flooding in streams and creeks that normally aren't much more than a trickle. The Sacramento River is expected to roar with its highest flows since 2006 and send a huge gush of water into the Yolo Bypass, the massive floodplain west of Sacramento engineered to prevent the city from getting swamped. Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article124863269.html#storylink=cpy

The lower Tuolumne River ran at its highest volume past Modesto in half a decade Wednesday, and it will get even bigger over the next week.

As of 2 p.m. Wednesday, the Tuolumne flow had tripled to about 3,000 cubic feet per second at the Ninth Street Bridge, according to the California Department of Water Resources. It will reach about 7,000 cfs at the peak of the planned releases. The river will rise high on the banks but not top them, said Calvin Curtin, spokesman for the Turlock Irrigation District. It operates Don Pedro in a partnership with the Modesto Irrigation District. Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/news/article124625034.html#storylink=cpy

In the name of saving the environment, thousands of green activists fighting to stop the Dakota Access pipeline are making a huge mess.

Those familiar with the camps near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, increasingly are distressed over the pits of human waste and garbage pockmarking the formerly pristine prairie revered by the Standing Rock Sioux as sacred ancestral land.

The Cloudbuster as designed by Wilhelm Reich did something amazingly well-it absorbed the negative orgone energy that surrounds us and induced rain. It made rain happen.

The main trouble with Wilhelm Reich's Cloudbuster was that because it pulled negative orgone energy from the space surrounding it, the cloudbuster accumulated, and soon became saturated with, negative orgone energy.

A devastating earthquake has hit the coast of Japan, with fears for the safety of nearby nuclear power stations.

The Japan Meteorological Agency have said that this new quake was actually an aftershock from the previous one, and have warned that further aftershocks could follow. The 2011 quake was catastrophic in it's destruction, killing 15,891 people, with a further 2,584 missing. It destroyed countless homes and ruined people's livelihoods. The fear that these quakes will cause a huge problem in the nuclear power sector is very real. About 30% of all Japan's power comes from nuclear power stations, many of which are located on the coast where the earthquakes tend to strike.

In a special meeting on November 1 the Tuolumne Utilities District (TUD) board will discuss the former Sierra Pines Golf Course Site in Twain Harte. The site is not currently organized for any use.

The Sonora 49er Rotary Club has partnered with Discs-n-Motion, an unincorporated club, and proposed to temporary use the site as a passive disc golf course. Both clubs state they will come together in planning and installing an 18-hole course and named Sierra Pines Disc Golf.Â Properties within 500 feet of the site have been sent an invitation to the Special Board Meeting. The public meeting will take place on November 1, 2016 at 6:30 PM at the Twain Harte Community Center.

In the last couple of centuries humans have done a strange thing: we've dug the biggest pits, the deepest holes, and the longest tunnels the world has ever seen, all to find the most insidious and subtle poisons known to our mammalian bodies.

What we need is a device that can suck toxins out of the soil and either turn them into something harmless, or concentrate them in something lightweight and removable. No one has much money lying around to invent such a device, though, much less to manufacture millions of them and send them to sites around the world for free. Thus, these hypothetical devices would be even better if they already appeared around the world. It would be best, in fact, if these machines cost nothing to create, and once created could make more of themselves, at an exponential rate. While we're at it, it would also be nice if the devices also prevented soil erosion, fed bees and other pollinators, and provided shade, beauty, a home for wildlife, and possibly firewood.

2016 continues to be a momentous year for the world's climate, on track to be the new hottest year on record.

To our south, Antarctica has also just broken a new climate record, with record low winter sea ice. After a peak of 18.5m square kilometres in late August, sea ice began retreating about a month ahead of schedule, and has been setting daily low records through most of September.

The Iditarod dog-sled race has gripped the imagination here for a long time, partly because it captures the idea, cherished by Alaskans, that a true-north wildness lies just over the horizon.

In trekking nearly 1,000 miles to the finish line in the old gold-rush town of Nome, mushers and their teams commemorate an event that captivated the world in 1925, when a sled team, led by a dog named Balto, raced through blizzards to deliver lifesaving serum to Nome during a diphtheria outbreak. The rescue made headlines around the world, and earned Balto a statue in Central Park in New York. And since 1973, the competitive race has been run to celebrate that trek.